Among Us 2: what's happening with the sequel?
The interest in the Innersloth title grew substantially in August before word spread and download numbers in September blew that out of the water. So what next?
Among Us 2 has been officially cancelled. PuffballsUnited, co-founder of InnerSloth, declared the news in late September via a statement as one of the biggest gaming phenomena of 2020 continues apace. Don’t worry though! The reason for cancelling is a pretty good one…
No Among Us 2... for now!
The objective behind this decision is to focus on improving the current product, as more and more people are introduced to the title. As well as simple options for mobile and tablet access to the game, there are paid - and free - ways to download and play it on PC and Mac.
The message from Innersloth read as follows:
"Hey everyone, PuffballsUnited here! It’s been a very exciting time for us the past few months! We’ve absolutely loved seeing everyone enjoying Among Us! Forte has been working hard to get the servers adjusted to deal with the huge influx of players. Thank you so much for bearing with us through these growing pains. Hopefully we can get started on new content soon! Speaking of new content…
Us devs have had several long discussions about what we want to do with the game. When do we stop working on Among Us 1? What content goes into Among Us 2? The main reason we are shooting for a sequel is because the codebase of Among Us 1 is so outdated and not built to support adding so much new content. However, seeing how many people are enjoying Among Us 1 really makes us want to be able to support the game and take it to the next level. We have decided to cancel Among Us 2 and instead put all our focus into improving Among Us 1. All of the content we had planned for Among Us 2 will instead go into Among Us 1. This is probably the more difficult choice because it means going deep into the core code of the game and reworking several parts of it. We have lots of things planned and we’re excited to bring new content to everyone as you continue to enjoy playing!"
Here's what the Innersloth team said about upcoming enhancements...
- Servers. Forte is still working very hard to figure out our server issues. We don’t have an ETA but things should hopefully be getting better and better. This is taking up all development time on his end.
- Colorblind support. It’s something we’ve put off for way too long… We plan on adding other identifiers for players as well as certain color focused tasks (Like wires). This should also open the potential for more colors. In the past we couldn’t add more colors because it became too difficult to tell players apart.
- Friends/Account System. This is something we’ve wanted to do for a long time but just haven’t been able to tackle. For the health of the game going forward we’re going to sink our teeth in and figure it out! This one will definitely take some time.
- A new stage! It is still very early and we have only just begun designing the layout. The theme has been settled on though! The next stage in Among Us is going to be a Henry Stickmin themed location!
So, the message is simple. Keep enjoying the game in the meantime and be a little patient as developments are made. The popularity of Among Us! - over 60 million downloads already - has really blown things up for the team but they are working hard to deliver more. As they themselves say:
"We have LOTS of other things planned too, we just need to prioritize and organize all our plans. Stay tuned!"